Some excellent responses to the BMJ article (see link above kindly provided by Joanipat), of which two, thankfully, are from right-minded GPs.
To sum them up:
Louise Newson refers to the authors’ comments as “medical gaslighting”;
Kate Muir (producer of Davina’s docs who has undertaken considerable and, crucially, recent research) draws attention to the ludicrously outdated studies upon which the authors base their text;
GP Helen Purser gives some non-menopause examples that illustrate the absurdity of the ‘unnatural’ brigade – eg. a patient deciding to stop all medications as they are ‘unnatural’, ascribing angina symptoms to ‘cultural conditioning’, being ok with dying younger because it’s ‘natural’ etc.
GP Andrew Coward (who is anything but!) merits quoting at some length for the crucial argument he presents:
“At the start of the 20th century women lived till 50 years on average, had 4 children, were broadly not in the workplace and died from pneumonia or TB. Now women live to 81, have 1.75 children, the vast majority work, and die from dementia and vascular disease. This begs the question of how we define “ normality” for women in terms of birth, periods, work, menopause, or mortality. Is it normal for 65% of dementia patients to be in women? Is it normal for 10% of women to quit their jobs as a direct result of the menopause with fatigue, anxiety, and brain fog particularly problematic?
Could it be that this modern phenomenon of living almost half your female life without oestrogen is the cause for both excessive disease and disabling symptoms? As a man I am relieved that male hypogonadism is not normalised because it presents with distressing symptoms such as lethargy, sleep disturbance, low mood and decreased strength and is entirely treatable with HRT in the form of testosterone. […] I am surprised that the BMJ published this without asking these questions to Hickey et al as of prime importance unless, of course, you have slipped unconsciously and indirectly into the all pervasive world of male entitlement.”
Round of applause from me. I also liked this tweet in response to the Guardian article “Pushback from doctors trade group BMJ when the group represented by them is questioned. Medical misogyny is alive and well”.
Hopefully there will be more replies and this degrading (to women and the medical profession) article will simply accelerate and strengthen the drive to parity.
CLKD – I like the idea of a register of GPs who won’t prescribe HRT without good reason – something along the lines of those rogue landlord databases
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Topic: guardian article on gp backlash (Read 4471 times)